Depo Darm presents the second group exhibition since the beginning of its operation in December 2014. The show, under the title "Manipulation", opens on Wednesday, 04 March 2015 at 7:30 pm and will run through Thursday, 16 April 2015.

The title sets as a starting point for inspiration and reflection a concept which could be described as highly topical in view of the socio-political developments of our time, and calls upon the three artists to approach and examine the situation from their own point of view.
"Manipulation" invites viewers to reflect upon the deluge of images and the media that assault them every day in an attempt to manipulate their lives, their thoughts and hence their choices.
Reference is made to the manipulation of the citizen as a being—the manipulation of the consumer, the voter, the working man, the artist and ultimately of art itself through a situation that takes shape subconsciously and seeks the optimum results for its instigators.

To Dimitris Lambrou, contemporary man could be seen as a machine, as a body broken down into components which are skilfully dismantled and reassembled every day.
His works comment on the ‘mass hypnosis’ imposed by the systems of all kinds (religion, politics, spectacle, marketing, mass media), which leads to a daily symbolic death of body and soul. People are turned into puppets, their every move dictated by the central mechanism of a —now global— metropolis which imposes upon every living being a well-programmed, easily predictable behaviour. Their movements, instincts and emotions are fully organised, generating synthetic dreams and compulsive desires that lead to the alternating adoption and rejection of an incessant consumption.

Yannis Melanitis focuses on manipulation through rhetoric. He attempts to look upon man as an organic recipient of external information through geometric patterns, whether these come from nature or are ‘prefabricated’ to interpret nature. Extending this schematisation to the concept of democracy, we could say that democracy is an interpretation or even a projection governed by specific geometric rules.
Every statement which is understood lies within a rectangular logical grid, moving at a right angle and stopping at the edges of the frame. To the artist, the ‘perfect’ orator must leave a door open to doubt as he constructs an endless series of thoughts.

Finally, Marios Fournaris perceives the notion of manipulation as the contradictory framework of action for dominant emotional responses, dependent control and rejection of the individual’s self-determination. His visual associations invest the issue with the symbolism of a “passion” that resides at the borderline of transgression of the rules, the unconscious dominance of fear of the “Self” towards the “Other”, the transcendental passage from inner need to egotistical desire. By indicating the conditions for the ascendancy of a visceral, subconscious self, Marios Fournaris ultimately manages to interact with “man manipulator” as much as with “manipulable man”.